quick question for people who have dealt with 03 exhaust pipes i recently cut my mufflers and resonator out of my car. it was a pain and expensive to get pipe for it. but i do like the sound it makes i was going to put flow master mufflers in it my dad had laying around but it was way too much modification to fit a 2.5 in muffler to a 1 3/4 in pipe. what does everybody else run for mufflers and how did you install them? i used band clamps for my straight pipe where the resonator was and i welded the straight pipes for where the muffler was it sounds nice and is holding up so far i was just wondering what you guys would suggest. thx

When I had my Bonneville, I did an SE to SSEi exhaust system swap. That is, I cut off the old exhaust system ahead of the resonator, and clamped and bolted the "new" system (y-pipe, mufflers, tips) in front of the stock resonator. No welding was done, although it should have been welded together. It sounded nice for what it was. The car was louder because of it.

In terms of suggesting what you should do, in my opinion, making it louder should be avoided. The car sounds like a swarm of angry bees without mufflers. When I had to replace clamps and pipe extensions after they rusted through and broke off, it was very booming and got obnoxious very fast. Get some sort of muffler on it, but don't restrict the sound too much. The resonator gives the 3800 a nice sound.

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'02 Pontiac Bonneville SE 108,539 miles, N/A, SSEi exhaust system, boat roller mount. Gone, but not forgotten.
'13 Buick Regal GS 102k miles, 270 hp, 295 lb/ft, ZZP intake.
(yes, there is a story behind my avatar.)

Little update on the overall sound of my car. So far everything has held up as far as my welds and clamps no leaks thank goodness, I think I'm going to leave my car straight piped its pretty freaking loud on cold start high idle but dang does it sound good i personally like it but some people might think its a little too loud. In the future i might invest in some mufflers that fit my car but I think i will just leave them as they are until something falls apart